In The New York Times, Rich Cohen calls the novel "brilliant," writing: "The book weaves like a melody. It’s beautiful, full of passages and bursts of dialogue that break through the noise of complaint and countercomplaint that define so much of the talk about modern Israel. As I went along, it began to remind me of one of those 3-D posters you stare at and stare at — it gives you a headache and becomes maddening until, all of a sudden, a landscape rises from the morass: the displaced persons camps, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn in the dead hours (“The bridge was empty and gleaming in the dark, and Ben had his pistol on the seat between them as they crossed the river into Manhattan”), the boxy apartment houses of Tel Aviv, the ethereal light of Jerusalem, the first Lebanon war. It all appears in these pages, shattered and reconstructed and shattered again."

This is the first novel from Lazar since "Sway" won wide acclaim in 2008. He teaches at Tulane University.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune's Chris Waddington chatted with Lazar about his book this spring. The author said that he strives to find nuance in his characters: "I don't want to judge. I want
to understand people," Lazar said. "That's essential for a fiction writer. The
process of writing has to lead me past the black-and-white versions of
character."

Not all reviews have been as laudatory, Shoshana Olidort of The Chicago Tribune praises the novel, but notes: "Lazar is a talented writer, and some of his lines are quite poignant:
"The moldy scent and the scent of lemon floor wax gave Gila a feeling
not unlike déjà vu, only there were no memories attached to it." But
lacking a sense of urgency, of something at stake — a truth, perhaps, or
the search for a truth — the novel reads at times like a half-hearted
attempt at conveying feelings of ill-belonging. Too often the writing
comes across as lazy, and the effect is unconvincing, as when Lazar
describes a character's urge to run away from her circumstances, 'as if
there were anyplace to run.'"